Category: Creating a garden

I’ve always had a bit of a ‘thing’ about sheds! Apart from being a great place to store tools, shelter from the rain, hide Easter eggs or hang a mirror(!) they can also add structure and shape to a garden design. Sheds can be practical or pretty (preferably both), ramshackle or brand new, but they are always a useful bit of garden ‘furniture’.

Our allotment shed was central to our garden plans and had to be in just the right place – easy to get in and out of and lovely to look at. But we had a fight on our hands. It was shed ‘versus’ rhubarb….

Having planned out the space for our allotment garden and cleared most of the weeds, we were now ready to tackle the beds and fencing. Luckily our children were on hand to help…

Raised beds: To raise or not to raise, that is the question?! We knew right from the start that we wanted to build raised beds, mostly because our allotment garden sits on a heavy clay soil and raising the beds would help with any drainage issues, but also because they’re easier to weed, there’s less bending over (slightly!), watering is more efficient and we could fill them with top-notch soil to get our growing season off to a flying start. Although raised beds would be an extra expense, we knew we’d also get a longer growing season and that eventually the outlay would repay itself in homegrown veg! Plus they’re really fun to play on….

What is a weed? There are some weeds that I really love, like nettles and others that I’m definitely not so keen on, like bindweed! Weeds are really just vigorous plants growing in the wrong place at the wrong time, but if they’re in the way then I’m afraid they have to go. Sorry weeds! However, this can be easier said than done, especially in an organic/biodynamic garden where no chemicals are used. There are other more natural ways to clear weeds that involve a little more work and a little more patience! In our case, we chose to clear the weeds by hand before we could begin planting.

Neck high brambles, rampant bindweed, stubborn grass, broken fences, piles of rubbish and a random turf mound! Sound familiar? That was the state of our allotment garden when we got the go-ahead from our local council in April 2014 and it was very daunting to say the least. Where to begin? It was already mid-Spring and ideally, we wanted to use the space that year as a productive fruit, vegetable and flower garden.

We already had one allotment tucked down at the end of the row, surrounded by fields and opposite an overgrown patch of woodland, but we decided, very much against common sense, that we’d like a bit more space for our chickens to roam and to plant more veg! Hence the request for a second ‘plot’.

In the coming months I’ll take you through the practical ins and outs, the ups and downs, the highs and lows of creating a beautiful organic fruit, veg and flower garden from scratch. As well as this being a personal record of our sweaty endeavours(!), I also hope that you can find some little nuggets of inspiration and learn from our mistakes!